These are the stocks to short when a COVID vaccine is ready, says JPMorgan

Executives at drugmakers Pfizer PFE and Moderna MRNA say their COVID-19 vaccine candidates could be ready, at least for limited use, by the end of the year. It will be good — make that, great — news for the economy if the vaccines are effective enough that face-to-face interactions can once again resume without much fear of spreading, or contracting, the new coronavirus. But in the stock market, it won’t universally be good news, as some companies have thrived during the current pandemic.

Strategists at JPMorgan have put together a list of companies that are at risk of steep drops. They are at the “upper echelon of momentum and have crowded positioning, that could see the second derivative of their profit growth decrease as consumer / corporate activity normalizes,” said the JPMorgan team. Some of the names, like Zoom Video Communications ZM, are obvious, but the list also includes companies including education technology provider Chegg CHGG and Central Garden and Pet Co. CENTA that aren’t as well known.

 

This group of stocks has outperformed the S&P 500 by about 9% this year.

This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.

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